Sunday will mark the fifth anniversary of the landmark National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (later rechristened the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, or MGNREGA). At a time when the country is debating the contours of similar landmark legislation for food security (the National Food Security Act), it is time to evaluate the working of MGNREGA, initially implemented in 200 of the country’s poorest districts and expanded to all...

Demanding adequate compensation to the family of a debt-ridden farmer who allegedly committed suicide, irate farmers in Orissa''s Kendrapara district today detained a senior government officer for three hours, police said. The incident took place at Andara village when Pattamundai tehsildar Pabitra Mohan Pradhan went there to investigate the alleged debt-induced suicidal death, they said. Locals squatted on the road leading to the village and put the tehsildar under detention for nearly...

The Bill to protect whistleblowers, introduced in the Lok Sabha, is a belated but welcome move to shield those who stand up, often at great personal risk, for the sake of truth and the public interest. The Public Interest Disclosures and the Protection to Persons Making the Disclosures Bill 2010 is the circuitous and protracted outcome of the Supreme Court's strong pitch for a mechanism to protect whistleblowers. This it...

Sunday will mark the fifth anniversary of the landmark National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (later rechristened the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, or MGNREGA). At a time when the country is debating the contours of similar landmark legislation for food security (the National Food Security Act), it is time to evaluate the working of MGNREGA, initially implemented in 200 of the country’s poorest districts and expanded to all...

There’s suddenly a flurry of activity in Karotia, a nondescript village in West Bengal’s Burdwan district. Lately, a lot of politicians and state government officials have been visiting the village, and they say work on a nearly forgotten 14km irrigation canal is going to start soon. It’s been nearly 36 years since the state government first proposed to dig the canal, recalls Azizur Haque, the local panchayat chief. It was to...